Featured Research

from universities, journals, and other organizations

Software Allows Neighbors To Improve Internet Access At No Extra Cost

Date:

April 28, 2006

Source:

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Summary:

Computer scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed software that enables the sharing of high-speed wireless connections without compromising security or privacy. The software can improve Internet connectivity in residential areas at no additional cost.

Share This

Computer scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed software that enables the sharing of high-speed wireless connections without compromising security or privacy. The software can improve Internet connectivity in residential areas at no additional cost.

Related Articles

"Significantly improved speed and the 'always on' feature of wireless routers have been driving the rapid spread of broadband Internet access in many residential areas," said Haiyun Luo, a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "More than 56 percent of homes in the United States already have Internet access, and more than half of those homes are using Wi-Fi wireless home networks."

A typical residential user accesses his broadband home connection about 12 to 15 hours per week, Luo said. "So, while the Internet connection is always on, most of the time it sits idle." Luo would like to see that idleness put to good use by benefiting other users, and he and graduate student Nathanael Thompson came up with a way to do it.

Luo and Thompson have developed a software framework called PERM (Practical End-host collaborative Residential Multihoming) that allows neighbors to pool their Internet access and thereby improve both performance and resilience.

"PERM exploits the diversity of broadband Internet access in residential areas to improve connectivity in a managed way," Luo said. "Our design requires no support outside the user's wireless router, and is immediately deployable."

By pooling all available Internet connections, neighbors can enhance their Internet connectivity at no additional cost. That is, if neighbors are willing to share.

"PERM represents a paradigm shift in the Internet user community," Luo said. "Until now, most users have been unwilling to share their wireless connections for fear of losing security and privacy. We offer a solution that ensures mutual benefit, security and privacy."

The sharing of Internet connections is open only to registered users who, in exchange for using connections belonging to others, must offer the use of their own. This "peer-to-peer" sharing concept has enormous potential, with millions of possible nodes, Luo said.

Within PERM, flow-scheduling algorithms select the best connection from those available. In addition, higher performance is achieved by selecting and using multiple connections when appropriate. The software framework also provides a service scheduler, which gives the owner priority over his wireless router and reports any misuse by others.

But the scope of PERM is still limited: Neighbors can only benefit from sharing when they are around each other's homes. The next step is to expand beyond neighborhoods and take collaborative Internet access on the road, literally.

"Wireless routers are necessarily location-based," Luo said. "But the peer-to-peer sharing concept can just as easily be used between cars, or between homes and cars, as between homes. As more users join the system, the more powerful the system will become."

Thompson will present the peer-to-peer Internet sharing concept and flow-scheduling algorithms at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers INFOCOM 2006 meeting in Barcelona, Spain, April 23-29.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Software Allows Neighbors To Improve Internet Access At No Extra Cost." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 28 April 2006. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/04/060428095341.htm>.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (2006, April 28). Software Allows Neighbors To Improve Internet Access At No Extra Cost. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 3, 2015 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/04/060428095341.htm

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Software Allows Neighbors To Improve Internet Access At No Extra Cost." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/04/060428095341.htm (accessed March 3, 2015).

More From ScienceDaily

More Computers & Math News

Featured Research

Mar. 3, 2015  By examining the forces that the segments of mosquito legs generate against a water surface, researchers have unraveled the mechanical logic that allows the mosquitoes to walk on water, which may ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015  Major cities in the UK are falling behind their international counterparts in terms of their use of smart technologies, according to a new study. The research has found that smart cities in the UK, ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015  To simulate chimp behavior, scientists created a computer model based on equations normally used to describe the movement of atoms and molecules in a confined space. An interdisciplinary research ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015  Magnetic vortex structures, so-called skyrmions, could in future store and process information very efficiently. They could also be the basis for high-frequency components. For the first time, a team ... full story

Mar. 2, 2015  The odds of picking a perfect bracket for the NCAA men's basketball March Madness championship tournament are a staggering less than one in 9.2 quintillion (that's 9,223,372,036,854,775,808), ... full story

Mar. 2, 2015  Scientists report that they could observe experimentally the current flow along channels at the crystal surfaces of topological insulators. The channels are less than one nanometer wide and extend ... full story

Mar. 2, 2015  Organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs), which are made from carbon-containing materials, have the potential to revolutionize future display technologies, making low-power displays so thin they'll wrap ... full story

Mar. 2, 2015  What if one day, your computer, TV or smart phone could process data with light waves instead of an electrical current, making those devices faster, cheaper and more sustainable through less heat and ... full story

Mar. 2, 2015  3-D printing could become a powerful tool in customizing interventional radiology treatments to individual patient needs, with clinicians having the ability to construct devices to a specific size ... full story

Featured Videos

Forensic Holodeck Creates 3D Crime Scenes

Reuters - Innovations Video Online (Mar. 3, 2015)  A holodeck is no longer the preserve of TV sci-fi classic Star Trek, thanks to researchers from the Institute of Forensic Medicine Zurich, who have created what they say is the first system in the world to visualise the 3D data of forensic scans. Jim Drury saw it in operation.
Video provided by Reuters

Related Stories

Apr. 25, 2014  The massive adoption of mobile computing platforms creates the urgent need for secure application execution on such platforms. Unfortunately, today’s mobile platforms do not support strong security ... full story

Mar. 7, 2014  Apps on web-enabled mobile devices can be used to spy on their users. Computer scientists have developed software that shows whether an app has accessed private data. To accomplish this, the program ... full story

Nov. 6, 2013  A software re-encryption system could allow users to pay for and run applications "in the cloud" without revealing their identity to the cloud host. The same approach would also allow the ... full story

May 21, 2010  There's a potential threat lurking in your internet café, say computer science researchers. It's called Typhoid adware and works in similar fashion to Typhoid Mary, the first identified ... full story

ScienceDaily features breaking news and videos about the latest discoveries in health, technology, the environment, and more -- from major news services and leading universities, scientific journals, and research organizations.